


Win or Lose

by justasparkwriting



Series: Stay [2]
Category: Kim Seokjin - Fandom, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Anxiety, BTS fluff, Distance, Dynamite, Established Relationship, F/M, Fear, award show, bts jin, bts slice of life, relationships, seokjin fluff, the grammys, win or lose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 08:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30052983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justasparkwriting/pseuds/justasparkwriting
Summary: Seokjin calls you to talk about The Grammy’s and his concerns if they lose.
Relationships: Kim Seokjin | Jin & Original Female Character(s), Kim Seokjin | Jin/Reader, Kim Seokjin | Jin/You
Series: Stay [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2159088
Kudos: 6





	Win or Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Stay and The Grammy's, which aired tonight and were a total disappointment.

**Win or Lose**

Seokjin had called once, twice, three times before you finally picked up. Disheveled and frustrated, his gentle features and rosy cheeks seemed in complete opposition of your mood. Frustrated by work, a cold looming in your sinuses, all you wanted was to crawl in bed and listen to him rattle off comforting phrases. But Jin’s own concerns overshadowed yours immediately. The give and take of your relationship evident in the way you traded off your needs with one another.

An hour into your call, Seokjin finally asks the question he called about. “What if we lose?”

“What do you mean if you lose?” You ask, tossing your hair into a ponytail. 

“You think we’re going to lose?” Jin worries.

“You’re up against four other acts, you have a chance at losing, but you also have a chance at winning,” You tell him, a heavy sigh escaping your lips.

“But we’re going to lose,” Seokjin clarifies.

“Not with that attitude,” You scoff. By this point, you’re exhausted. Tired of talking, tired of being beholden to another person, exhausted.

“I’m being serious,” Seokjin’s tone shifts, the fear and worry coating his irises.

“Are you, or are you being difficult?” The words come out faster than you can stop them, all anger and no compassion, empathy gone as you stare at him through your phone. He reads your expression, muted, eyes dark, brows stooped low. He looks closer and notes the redness of your nose.

“Are you not feeling well?” He asks.

“Why, because I’m being a bitch?”

“Your nose is red and you’re sniffling. Are you getting sick?”

You stare at him, your Seokjin, always looking out for you. “Yeah, I’m getting sick.”

“Aein, why didn’t you say so? I’ll send you soup tomorrow for dinner,” Jin pauses the call to set a reminder, calculating the time difference quickly before returning back to you.  
“Babe you don’t need to do that,”

“Yes, I do,” His words are final.

“Why can’t you talk to the guys about this?” You redirect him to the topic at hand, the impending Grammy Awards.

“I can’t, I can’t talk to the band about this,” Seokjin shakes his shaggy locks.

“This is a perk of being the secret girlfriend?” You chide.

“Yes,”

“Okay, so you might lose. Big deal, the Grammy’s are giving out 83 awards this year, there will be at least 100 losers, and 83 winners, give a few for larger projects,” You remind him for what feels like the twentieth time this week.

“That’s not the point,” His hair rustles.

“Of losing?”

“No, just, listen, okay?” He asks.

“Okay, I’m all ears,” Your annoyance heard loud and clear.

Seokjin holds up a finger. “We’re nominated because the Recording Academy feels bad about their racism.”

“Yes,” You nod.

His second finger goes up, which he moves towards his eye and away, clearly mocking Taehyung’s signature gesture. “And Dynamite’s our first all English song,”

“Facts,” You nod again.

“Don’t be impatient with me,” Jin pleads.

“I’m not!” You note the increased level of your voice before inhaling slowly. “I’m giving solid verbal cues that I am listening.” 

He stares at you before nodding “Fine. Third, Dynamite’s the biggest song in the world.” 

“True,”

“We’re going to lose,” He concludes.

“What’s wrong with losing?” You ask, squirming deeper into your bed, an RJ plushie that Seokjin sprayed with his cologne slipping under your arm, only to have your cheek rest against it.

“It’s embarrassing,” Jin admits. 

“You’ve lost before. I’ve seen you nearly lose in almost every episode of RUN,” You remind him.

“But not in this way, not on a stage this big,”

Reaching for your phone charger, you turn slightly away from him as you speak. “You have the highest honors from the entire country you are from, how does the Recording Academy mean more to you than that?”

“It’s not about the Academy,” Jin whines. 

“Tell me, Jinnie, what is it about?” It’s taking every inch of patience to not roll your eyes at him. He’s being vulnerable, openly so, asking you to listen and love him through it. Which would be fine, if he hadn’t called about this same thing yesterday. And the day before. And two days prior to that. He’s never been this insecure, not in the years you’ve been together, perhaps when they almost disbanded but since then? Confidence city.

“It means we can perform for more people, be seen by more people, be taken seriously on the market,” Jin’s voice pulls you back to him.

“Is this what Namjoon and Yoongi have been saying?” You ask. You know him well enough that sometimes the fears he’s uttering have been planted in his mind by someone else, though that never invalidates the reality of his fears.

“Yes,” He answers.

“They’re not wrong,” You say, moving your RJ plushie behind your head.

“Rarely,” Jin rolls his eyes, an action even a slightly blurred videocall can’t mistake.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Disappointed,”

“It makes me really fucking angry,”

“Y/N! My ears!” He teases.

“Jin you know it’s true,” Your smile is warm, reminding him of the happiness you elicit within him.

“I know. I just don’t know what we have to do to be seen as equal,” Seokjin tells you.

“I’m not sure you ever will be,” You reply.

He pauses, the sudden rush of emotions flooding his senses. He glances away from you to inhale before turning back.

“Will we ever be good enough?” He wonders.

Jin watches you shift, eyes closing longer than a blink should last, nodding your head slowly.

“You can’t think like that,” You inform him.

“Why not? What else are we supposed to think?”

“I’m worried what happens if you start thinking that way, Seokjin. What happens to Jimin? Or Jungkook or Tae? What about Hoseok?” Your calming smile disappearing.

“We’re all thinking it,” Seokjin counters.

“You can’t dwell on it,” You push.

“Why not? We’re clearly not-

“Is Dynamite a good song?” You snap.

He stares at you, uncertain of the direction this conversation is taking. “No,”

“So, don’t dwell on it,”

“We got nominated for a shitty song, why when we do our best is it not even an option for us to succeed here?” He relents.

“The Grammys are trash, everyone knows it,” You remind him.

“They’re a club we don’t have the keys to, and everyone is already there, eating cake,”

“That was too many metaphors for me to keep track of,”

“You know what I mean,” He rolls his eyes softly.

“Everyone has an invitation, but _you_ ,” You say.

“Yes,”

“You have won nearly every MAMA and MNET award, broken countless records,”

“The world doesn’t care if we don’t have a Grammy,”

“Fuck the world,” You roll your eyes dramatically, annoyance biting through.

“I wish I could, but we need them,” Jin tells you.

“No, you don’t, Jin, you don’t need them at all.” It’s the same cry you’ve been trying to drill into his brain for months, to absolutely no avail.

“How? Who cares about us if we don’t have one?” His anger is flaring, the kind that he bottles up until absolutely pushed.

“Literally everyone. You can’t spit without someone knowing you,”

“We won’t be taken seriously, our music won’t be played, we won’t be nominated again! They don’t care that our work is charting or doing well, they just care that we don’t have a stupid golden statue,”

“You have literally everything else,”

“You’re not listening,”

“I am too!”

“No, you aren’t! We’ve done everything, recreated the Late Show’s stage, done stupid carpool karaoke, we rented all of Incheon, and performed on actual planes! We performed at Sangam Stadium and Gyeonghoeru! And for what? For the Recording Academy to watch us on top of a building, on a set we recreated? We’ve done it all before! They’ve never cared or noticed. What do they want from us?” Seokjin’s exploded, words flowing like molten magma, spewing from him. He’s been so tethered, unwavering, only breaking his cool now, completely at the breaking point.

“Seokjin,” You say, calling him to you. “Please, take a breath,”

“I can’t,” The sobs come through, shaking his shoulders, rattling his hair, breath caught up in the saltiness streaming down his cheeks.

“Jin?” You whisper over his sobs.

“What?”

“I’m, scared,”

“About?” He reaches for a tissue, dabbing his eyes and cheeks.

“I’m scared about what you’re saying to me,” You answer.

“What am I saying to you?” Seokjin’s confusion finds purchase in his pout.

“It’s not, it’s the implications of what you’re saying,” You try to clarify.

“What are the implications?”

“Jin, you know,” You push.

Sipping his water, he shakes his head. “Tell me.”

“The seven of you don’t know how to slow down or stop. Even when you’re going a million miles an hour, you’re still suffering. I’m scared of all the past events, the insomnia, the disordered eating, the diets, the being afraid to get your shoulder fixed so you walk around in pain for five years… I’m scared of all of it like it’s going to come back,” You try and hold his gaze, but it’s hard, watching him sip his water delicately, knowing both of you are breaking.

“We’re older, wiser, we won’t do that again,” He answers.

“You can’t promise me that any more than I can promise you you’re going to win a Grammy,” You counter. The defiance in your gaze butts up against the weakness in his. You two have never been one to disagree.

Jin just stares, not finding the appropriate words to speak next.

“I worry, about you,” You offer the olive branch.

“I know you do,” He sighs, willfully taking hold of it.

“If you grow a mullet, this relationship will be over,” You remind him.

“Aye! So willing to toss it away? Over hair?”

“It’s too long, and I don’t like it!”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” He smirks.

“I’m not, I’m giving you an incentive,” You wink.

“I don’t know when I’ll get to cash in on it,”

“Seokjin,”

“Yes?”

“Please, don’t let this spin out of control,” You choose to be soft this time, soft instead of conniving and ruthless, soft instead of mean and judgmental.

“If we don’t win?” He repeats the question.

“Yes, if you don’t win. You probably won’t,”

“Ouch,”

“It’s true, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. You could win, and that would be thrilling, but please, you can’t push yourself as hard as you did during the _Love Yourself_ era or before that. I can’t,” Your free hand wipes the tears rolling down your over heated cheeks.

“Why not? What if I’m up to it?” He questions.

“You want to eat chicken breast for a year?” You snap, the softness giving way to the edges.

“No,” Seokjin shakes his head again, long locks rustling.

“What if you come up with new tactics? Who is going to be looking out for you?”

“You weren’t there the first time!”

“We hadn’t met yet, how is that an argument?” 

“The second time,” Jin whispers, eyes staring at yours, watching the anger boiling over.

“What?” You ask, blood running cold.

“It, it happened again,” He says.

“When?”

“A few months after we got together, in 2019,”

“Seokjin, you promised me,”

“I know,”

“You said it hadn’t happened, and it wouldn’t happen, meanwhile it was happening?” Your yell doesn’t catch him by surprise, but he flinches either way.

“We live in different places, it’s easy to hide,” He concedes.

“How bad?” You press.

“A little,”

“That’s not an answer!”

“I was just rehearsing a lot more than usual, eating a lot of green things,” He didn’t want to tell you, clearly, and for good reason. You wish he had just lied.

“Enough green things, or barely enough?”

“Enough,”

You pick your words carefully, sure not to mince them or distort what it is you’re trying to ask. “Then why is it a secret?”

“I promised you, and I was lying,”

“You’ve kept that to yourself for what, over two years?”

Seokjin nods.

“This is why I’m scared of what will happen if you lose,” You tell him.

“It won’t happen,” He promises.

“How do you know?”

“I have you, you know all my secrets, all my tells, everything.”

Taking that information in, you ask your next question. “Do the guys know?”

“Yeah,” 

“I can’t take it if you lie to me, Seokjin, I can’t,” You’ve taken the RJ plushie from behind you, wrapping him in your arms and lightly sniffing his fur, still smells like Seokjin.

“I know, I know,” He vows.

“Do you?”

“I do, I won’t lie again,”

“If you lose,”

“When,”

“If, you know ARMY isn’t going anywhere, right?”

“No, I don’t,”

“Jin, they are obsessed with you. You mean so much to them, they have your face and RJ’s on any item they can get their hands on. ARMY exists because of you, side by side with you. They won’t go anywhere,”

“What about after service?”

“I can’t talk about that,” The edges are coming back, threatening to cut him as he treads towards you.

“Why not?”

“Because I cannot begin to understand it and I’ve already cried. I don’t want to be mad at you the night before the Grammys, and I don’t want to not talk to you because I can’t bare to do that either.”

“I have one question,” He tells you.

“Huh?”

“Will you still love me?” Seokjin asks.

“What do I always tell you?” You counter.

He smiles softly, “That you’ll always stay,”

“Jungkook really hit it out of the park when he wrote that,” You try and copy his expression, lips pulling softly at the corners, a smile forming.

“So you’ll stay?”

“Yes, and so will ARMY,”

“Promise?”

“Everyday and every night, I will always stay,” You reassure.

“I see the sun, too,” He says, eyes glancing out his window.

“I see the moon,” You reply.

“You want me to sing to you?” Seokjin asks, leaning back against his headboard.

“Please, but, Jin,” You pause, “I love you,”

“I love you too, now close your eyes.”

“Also, Jinnie?”

“Hm?”

“You’ll be alright, win or lose, I know so,”

“Thank you jagi,” Jin bows gently.

“Okay, now you can sing,” You smile before closing your eyes.

_“Moon river / wider than a mile / I’m crossing you in style someday,_ ” Seokjin sings, lulling you to sleep.


End file.
